Framework

so Here's what I'm going for with the next Chapter: Chapter 1 is kind of an intro and flowery interpretation of what I was all about at the time. Probably need to go back and add a little more to it. Chapter 2 is really just started, but it is supposed to be a personal history of Greg, his dad, and the company without getting too dry. So, I think it's time for a light-hearted situational glimpse of some of the cast of characters through a dialog interaction.

While I'm at it, let me chart out what's on my mind:

Chapter 3--Meeting Sharon then having the meeting with Sonic, reading employee manual, Steve M., Gaspar, Greg and the "payment".

chapter 4--Immediate success and then the rut.

Chapter 5--Ed and the establishment of the Business Services Department

Chapter 6--Gar and Nancy

Chapter 7--Driver Stories

Chapter 8--The Potato Factor

Chapter 9-Applying Cost/Benefit to Everything in sight

Chapt 10--A business Plan

Chapter 11--Legal and Accounting woes

Chapter 12--In pursuit of technology

Chapter 13--Me and Ed

Chapter 14--The Beginning of the end

Chapter 15--Summary

OK--this is oversimplified and the titles are really just to trigger my memory.

I would like to get as many of the memories down as possible to begin with, then go back and clean it all up, making all the lies consistent ( ;) ) including all the name changes. Fran saw that I renamed the company owner Greg and laughed for a complete 3 minutes yesterday, so I'm wondering if I should keep that.

Again, this story has to have more than just experiences and stories, but lend insight and true humor (not 3 Stooges humor).

Someone read the story and said it was "highbrow"--I wonder if that's good.

Another weird thing--as I start working out the details of the story, other things come to mind. for example, in chapter 2 I detail that I went to Greg's office and Admador was driving a forklift. Well, I remembered (in the shower) that the reason I went to the office was that Fran and I were invited to come to the warehouse and look at some furniture that was for sale. It was all new furniture, but I was certain that it was hot. In fact, I held up one of the warranty registration tags to Greg and asked him "So... would it be a good idea to fill this out and send it in?"

He didn't answer. I was wondering if he didn't answer because it was hot, because he was offended that I insinuated it was hot, or because he wasn't sure if it really ever does anything to send in a warranty registration card except put you on a mailing list, and so he was wondering if it really was a good idea. Another possibility was that he wasn't listening.

Fran and I had a windfall and decided to get a new sleeper sofa and chair for about $500 (this was right after we got married and was our first official furniture together and, sadly, they are right in front of me in our loft right now as I type), and I was visiting Greg's business to pick them up in a truck. Amador decided to load the sleeper sofa in the truck for me with the forklift and accidentally punched a hole in the fabric in the back of my precious new sofa with a forklift fork. I was very surprised and a little irritated. Then: awkward silence. They thought I was going to take the damaged couch anyway!

Then Greg came out of his office and we found another couch exactly like the one that was damaged and we hand-loaded it into the back of the pickup truck, along with the recliner. This was my first introduction to a freight dock , and I was somewhat surprised by the lack of efficiency.

Now: Is this good to add into the book, or does it kind of contradict what I describe as Amador? I know he was a hard worker, but he was also bull-headed and tried to get by with as little work as possible--the reason he was trying to load with a forklift is that he wanted to stay sitting down in the forklift and not have to get out of it. This is a phenomenon that I've observed with other forklift drivers, too, though--the get a weird feeling of invincibility where the insist on using the machine for everything when it may be easier to get out...But is that interesting?

Another incident that I remembered at that location is working out a report with Greg, our first analytical report. Something funny there: Greg was trying to project expenses if he grew the business. One customer was offering to let him increase the number of loads for a volume discount, and Greg was trying to decide if it was going to be worthwhile. He gave me some of the financials and asked me to multiply them by 30% increase in total sales. So, this is how I got my job with him. He wanted me to make the calculations and then he would privately analyze them and make mental adjustments for projections that he thought wouldn't hold up at a constant percent increase, for example: rent. If we get 30% more volume, our rent doesn'tt go up.

So I asked Greg: "What expenses relate directly to an increase in volume?" Greg, surprised: "Driver wages, Gas&oil, probably maintenance, but not at the same %"--so I broke up the financials into fixed and variable expenses and projected the increase that way. Then I asked him about the productivity of the new business--is it average or more than average? Blank, thoughtful stare. He really had no clue. I asked him a couple of other questions, but they were carefully worded not to put him on the defensive about how little he knew about the true level of productivity in his company. In fact, he truly believed that it was impossible to track due to the complexity of the specific circumstances of his company. The reason for this was that there were dozens of variables that can enter into the equation such as the fact that, for maximum efficience, delivery drivers were mixed with multiple accounts' deliveries. Also, they typically spent some amount of time on the dock loading, then some time delivering, then some time writing up paperwork when they get back. Traffic, waiting time at delivery locations, fueling every day--those things added so much variability that it couldn't be calculated.

But, since we weren't publishing a treatise on cold fusion, I managed to get satisfactorily close to the real number by isolating one or two drivers that were dedicated to that account and calculating their productivity from their logs over a few days. It turns out that this account lent itself to be more productive than average for the company, so I plugged this into the equation and it turned out looking like a great deal.

Greg took the increased business and it changed his company, enabling him to add more trucks. From my standpoint, it was a taste of production analysis in a raw environment. No good data available and so it was necessary to be very creative to track down something to calculate with.

After I started working for Greg, he developed a pattern of behavior where he got less and less tolerant of any assumptions, to a completely unreasonable and unhealthy level. I did my best to point out to him that a variance of 1-2% wasn't significant in this type of calculation, and even tried to teach him about statistical standard error by drawing curves and showing him statistical distribution. A few times he insisted that we go through and analyze each data point individually, a painstaking process that once turned a 20-minute report into over 100 hours of research--the difference in the numbers ended up being 1-2% from my projections.

Later, when he would ask me to generate a production report, I started saying: "Well, I think I can get a 90% correct answer in about 5 minutes, a 95% correct answer in 20 minutes a 99% answer in about an hour, and a 100% answer by tomorrow." During that time, I was very focused and had assigned myself quality control duties just to help keep the billing moving and fill in the gaps where we were lacking. It was frustrating that some of these reports would be generated with excellent, interpretable data, and Greg would either not look at them for several weeks, leaving the data outdated, or, if it did not support the decision that he was considering, he would get mad at the numbers and start questioning assumptions. Overall, although it was probably a healthy dialog to have, the tone would get combative and I would be stuck defending my calculations and assumptions.